


A Moment Apart

by Sharkchimedes



Series: kissed in cosmic dust [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), also from martinex, background appearances from krugarr mainframe and charlie, originally id have tagged him but he has one line, some headcanon stuff regarding the guardians 3000 so not comic lore compliant, this is an IW based fic what did yall expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 14:21:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16934865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharkchimedes/pseuds/Sharkchimedes
Summary: This year had already marked the loss of one of the seven captains that was represented in the points of the Ravager flame.Unfortunately, the Mad Titan has ideas about the remaining six.Or, when only two members of a species remain, who takes the losing odds?





	A Moment Apart

**Author's Note:**

> i would apologize but im not sorry so Enjoy

Change and death is the way of the universe. There have been empires that have cut paths through the stars, planets that go dead and cold with or without help, whole species that vanished under some weight. You can’t throw a stone into any galaxy, let alone their own, and not hit a planet with an ancient enemy. For Stakar and Aleta, it’s the Reavers, extinct by millenium as they might be. Yondu hated the Kree, Kraglin hates the Nova Core, and all the rest of the seven captains have their own world-enders.

When you’re nearly extinct, there’s usually a reason why, and that reason is usually on the other side of a gun with its finger on the trigger.

And it also means that you’re more likely to attach yourself to other survivors. Stakar hadn’t exactly set out to gather a group of lone survivors, but it had happened. Aleta said it was because he was a sap, but it was also a solidarity.

And generally speaking, no one much cares for the ancient races. The Elder, the Celestials. The few that are left are what most either regard as necessary dangers, or stay well the hell away.

(Stakar and Aleta haven’t been around Knowhere since Tivan’s last effort to secure the remaining Arcturians. They had been young then, and when they had spent time out there it was as Starhawk. The first effort had been an offer. Then he’d gotten _persistent_ . They’d destroyed one of the Taneleer mining operations on their way out. Just as a hard _no, fuck off._

They didn’t go to the edge of the known either. Not until recently.)

It’s  much safer to travel the galaxy as something else for many species, those with longevity particularly. That’s why the “Arcturian (IV; Hawk-Blooded)”  in their medical docs is locked up under that century’s flavor of baseline humanoid mammalian. This century’s is Xandarian, and Stakar and Aleta aren’t the only ones they know using it. It would be a helluva lot more awkward for them though if they started bleeding everywhere than it would be for Kraglin though.

Hraxians bleed blue, like Xanadarians. The difference in color is negligible to most doctors that a Ravager would see.

Arcturians? Not so much.

But overall, for the most part, things have settled down recently in their little spiral galaxy. Sure, the Kree and the Nova are still having little tiffs here and there, but that’s routine, and it isn’t a full scale war now like it was a few decades ago.

The worst matters now, are personal. It’s been a few months now since the gathering out the edge, and while things aren’t exactly _okay_ , that’s going to be the new normal. Actual loss is _new_. For all their age, this is the first group of non-functionally-immortals that the Ogords have attached themselves too. The guilt is familiar, but heightened. Stakar has spent a lot of mornings staring out into the void, grappling between the idea of what could’ve been done and the answer being very little, if anything. And certainly not anything now.

Of course, as things are the way they are and will be, change comes.

Someone goes knocking for death. This someone, of course, is the Mad Titan. They had known of him for a long time now, but there is little that they could do against him. There are things that even they can’t fight as Starhawk. There’s little that _anyone_ can do, which is why he can game the Kree and take out swathes of species at random. It’s been about thirty years now, since the last one of those.

All they can do is keep the clans moving, and make sure that no one with a Ravager’s flame is near one of those godawful damn stones.

For the most part, that’s worked. The only clan that’s come within a system of one was the 99th, and their technical-grandson and his crew, but it had turned out alright and they’d smartly all left the thing to the Nova.

Truth be told, Stakar hadn’t even heard about that until several weeks later. He and Martinex had been on an away with senior crew, and when they got back, Martinex had spat hot caffiene-laden grog over his console when they’d checked the ‘net.

So they cross the already banned system of Xandar off their starcharts.

One, Aleta tells him once they’d had their row and nearly scorched the outside hull after fusing to continue said row outside when Martinex had come in and told them “finishing working through it, and just fuck already, so I can _go to bed at some point this cycle_!”, is with Tivan. This bit of gossip was picked up from some Hordesmen that they’d caught stealing from her clan, in a desperate bit at getting let go.

It figures. None of the Elder knew when to quit.

But no amount of supposed protection is going to stop the Mad Titan from getting the stones, so Mainframe gets tasked with predicting how far away is far enough from Knowhere, and they draw back in again.

Stakar gets a migraine about four months after the seven captains have rejoined their clans into the first fleet, fire and purple light and _heat_ send him stumbling into Aleta when he nods off during a finances meeting. He hasn’t had a _sight_ in a while, and chalks it up to having Aleta around again. Without her, the best he can do with his inner fire is to summon his solar wings. He’s always gotten more future-migraines with her around. He wouldn’t trade her presence for anything.

He just wishes he knew _what_ it meant.

He gets his answer a week later.

Xandar _burns_. The whole of galaxy is in a state of panic. By now, it’s pretty clear where the rest of the cursed relics have gone, and they set their flock to migrate as far as they can, nearly to the edges of the galaxy. The stronghold of the Ravagers now rests at a crossroads, and they abandon it too.

Perhaps it is cowardly, but they both remember Arcturus IV. They have flown, and will keep flying, as far as they can. Flying is a victory. Sometimes that means flying _away_.

Reports come in that Knowhere has burned too, the last known celestial remnant gone. They do not feel bad for this. It was inevitable. Tivan would bring death sooner or later. Elder are no better than Celestials, the Collector was an Elder in the skull of a rotting Celestial.

The bad feeling comes from the knowledge that there aren’t many relics left. Half, in fact. The galaxy is thickening, the void going sick with apprehension. The _Starhawk_ sits in a sea of Ravager vessels, nervous crews going between ships. There are groups in the mess, and in the halls, playing cards and eating and wondering what the top brass is doing.

The top brass is trying to figure that out themselves. Stakar can hardly close his eyes without a migraine hammering its way between them, visions of nothing but darkness and voices screaming for him, void above and below and no light. He stops sleeping after the first few nights he jolts awake screaming back, and he and Aleta lay near melded in their nest.

Martinex and Charlie and the other captains stay on the _Starhawk_ , and when they aren’t all hiding in their bunks either trying or faking sleep, they sit in the lounge behind the bridge and talk quietly.

One day, it’s worse than it’s been before. _Everyone_ is on edge. Aleta keeps throwing knifes into the bulkheads, Mainframe is mumbling bits and pieces of code, and Martinex almost burns a hand through a door.

He can’t do much for any of them, because he’s been slamming the pills the doc gave him for his head. They aren’t helping; he burns through them like they’re nothing, and not even stuffing them into the fish they keep in the galley helps.

So he just finds Aleta on the lounge when they’re gathering for that night’s nervous sit-down and buries his face into her shoulders, wrapping his arms around her tight as he can.

Krugarr says that something is coming. Something _bad_. But he can’t say what it is.

He never has the chance.

And half the universe crumbles to dust and is _gone_.

The last thing Stakar knows is a feeling like all the fire has been sucked from him and an ache down to his kindling, and Martinex shouting, and Aleta screaming. For a second, he doesn’t understand _why_. It’s almost like a sucking feeling.

Arcturians are functionally immortal, so long as they nest and bask in fire every century or so, or after an injury. It’s almost like that, except instead of Aleta’s fire curling with his and the feeling that the embers are coming into him, it’s like he can actually feel the void and vacuum of space, and it’s all gone out and he can’t reach for her fire anymore.

He tries to call for her, tries it in the language only they know, because the coos and calls that sound so very similar to their hypothetical tiny raptor cousins don’t go through a translator with any kind of grace.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see a solar wing fall away into ash. It’s wrong. Starhawks are supposedly to eventually erupt into ash; a glittering, powdery ash that scatters through the stars until it reunites with others and forms a new fire. It’s why they burn the Ravager dead; so that when they do eventually burst, they will see their self-made flock again.

This is sick,  crumbling like an ancient mural of rock, fading away like it had never been at all.

Something passes through his other arm.

He mumbles a prayer to the Hawk-God, something he hasn’t done since he was a fledgling staring out across the sea under the Ogord cliffs of their homeworld.

Then, the yawning graveyard of Infinity.

**Author's Note:**

> Heyyyyyy yall. This has been sitting in my drafts for a while so i decided w Endgame getting all trailery this week that it was time to just get off my ass and post it dhdhhfhfhf
> 
> My headcanons/thoughts that inspired this mess:
> 
> 1\. I just. Love the g3000 mcu versions a lot okay  
> 2\. Two arcturians go into IW. Only one can come out  
> 3\. I’m p sure any species w just one member at the time of the snap would die. Like just given what Thanos is Like. Two members? Halved. One? Tough luck pal. Unfortunately this eliminates all but one of the g3000 but we here to angst not to have fun am i right? :’)
> 
> i miiiight give this another chapter but since im writing a starhawk mcu longfic i'll probably just touch on this again w that but thank yall so much for reading and feel free to yell at me @sharkchimedes!


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